Profile for X

Field	Value
Displayed name	X
Member number	496
Title	Shaper
Postcount	2333
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Registered	Monday, January 7 2002 08:00

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Many others have done this... in General
X Shaper Member # 496	written Thursday, September 11 2003 15:59 Profile #15 I'm near mine too, but worry that the boards might get too cluttered with these dratted celebrations. That Amsterdam one - I'm not over that yet (the 'Rock the Casbah' thread). Posts: 2333 | Registered: Monday, January 7 2002 08:00
ASTRONOMY UPDATE: Mars in General
X Shaper Member # 496	written Wednesday, September 10 2003 10:12 Profile #32 Doesn't Lord of Evil have something about vampire bats and blood-drinking generally - or am I thinking of someone else? BTW, at least Jimi Hendrix died less embarassingly than Jim Morrison. Officially he suffered a heart attack whilst bathing. Posts: 2333 | Registered: Monday, January 7 2002 08:00
Culture in General
X Shaper Member # 496	written Wednesday, September 10 2003 10:03 Profile #28 Yes, I was going to say that culture is something tweedy English colonels think Americans haven't got, the better to disguise their own boorishness. US popular culture is particularly tasteless / exuberantly naive though - I've seen the opening ceremony of the US Olympics, with its banks of grand pianos and the guy bouncing around with the jet pack, actually being shown as a case study in cultural studies lectures. Posts: 2333 | Registered: Monday, January 7 2002 08:00
Visiting frequency in General
X Shaper Member # 496	written Wednesday, September 10 2003 09:52 Profile #12 I visit one every day or two, but will typically contribute perhaps a half- to a dozen posts each time. I've slowed down in the last week or two as the display has been a bit screwy, meaning I end up typing half a dozen lines and then have to suit for 5 minutes as they gradually appear before me, line by line. Then I have to go back and try proofing them all. Dead annoying! Posts: 2333 | Registered: Monday, January 7 2002 08:00
Help get ST:DS9 back on! in General
X Shaper Member # 496	written Friday, September 5 2003 16:23 Profile #21 Kirk is a fat fascist, the prime reason I hate Star Trek. Posts: 2333 | Registered: Monday, January 7 2002 08:00
Culture in General
X Shaper Member # 496	written Friday, September 5 2003 16:20 Profile #23 Hm, not sure about the gorilla though. Posts: 2333 | Registered: Monday, January 7 2002 08:00
Evil Companies in General
X Shaper Member # 496	written Wednesday, September 3 2003 08:29 Profile #81 ^ Is this a deleted double-post or a surreal exposition on Lord of Evil's consciousness? Posts: 2333 | Registered: Monday, January 7 2002 08:00
The War of the Races in General
X Shaper Member # 496	written Wednesday, September 3 2003 08:25 Profile #24 Yeah, when Nephilim book into hotels, do they moan about the lack of kitty litter or do they just go out and scratch up the lawn? Posts: 2333 | Registered: Monday, January 7 2002 08:00
Culture in General
X Shaper Member # 496	written Wednesday, September 3 2003 08:18 Profile #16 You'll have to send that definition to the reductionist sociobiologist Richard Dawkins, who originated the concept (his own 'meme' / hype?!). I doubt he would be amused - all the more reason to send it to him. Watch it though - it's disturbing what quasi-religious fervour this professional atheist inspires amongst his fans, all of whom thought their lives 'meme'-ingless before they came to revere his sacred texts. Posts: 2333 | Registered: Monday, January 7 2002 08:00
ASTRONOMY UPDATE: Mars in General
X Shaper Member # 496	written Wednesday, September 3 2003 08:07 Profile #27 In UK, we say 'bogies' for the congealed mucus that you (I mean 'you' - I would never do such a thing...) can pick out of your nose. Oh dear, I suppose that's General for you - though I'd say a thread shifting from GF2 beta-testing to politics is probably less distressing to the sensitive than one shifting from the wonders of the universe to nasal excrement. Posts: 2333 | Registered: Monday, January 7 2002 08:00
To all European football fans in General
X Shaper Member # 496	written Wednesday, September 3 2003 07:58 Profile #37 You make a fair point, Lady Marmelade - the vast majority of footie fans have no time for hooligans, who are likely to get England excluded from the European Cup at this rate. Euro matches aside, it was pretty much on its last gasp back in the late-1980s with the big riot at Luton where the cops were pelted out of the stadium. It was this rout of the forces of 'law and order' that led prime minister Margaret 'Iron Maiden' Thatcher to set up the NFIU and pass laws specifically designed to break the hooligan firms. Before then, mates of mine can remember taking other firms' pubs off them on match days with plenty of glass thrown and / or broken, and running through the streets with mounted police / rival fans behind them, turning over cars as they went. It was an adventure in an otherwise boring life like a real-life version of 'Fight Club', basically, even if a lot of people did get hurt as a result. Posts: 2333 | Registered: Monday, January 7 2002 08:00
To all European football fans in General
X Shaper Member # 496	written Tuesday, September 2 2003 05:34 Profile #32 Pitches aren't generally fenced off in UK stadiums because fans get crushed or burned to death by the dozen if anything untoward happens. In fact, this has happened in the past on occassions rather too common to speak well of club respect for fans. I don't reckon much to a hooligan 'code' where only rival firms are targeted eiher. Like Medieval chivalry, that's typically honoured in the breach, real factors beng the availability of drink and targhets, and the vigilance of the police Football National Intelligence Unit. Posts: 2333 | Registered: Monday, January 7 2002 08:00
Culture in General
X Shaper Member # 496	written Tuesday, September 2 2003 05:20 Profile #7 Are we going to discuss culture's significance or merely its definition? Posts: 2333 | Registered: Monday, January 7 2002 08:00
The War of the Races in General
X Shaper Member # 496	written Tuesday, September 2 2003 05:18 Profile #16 And Valorim is marginal to the Empire anyway, suggesting more military hardware and loyalty available in more established regions. I'm suspicious about how united the Vahnatai are too. If even that one clan can't resist fighting amongst themselves--even stealing sacred crystal souls to please human invaders--I seriously doubt Vahnatai clans are likely to cooperate much with each other against a centrally-controlled, unified Empire. Posts: 2333 | Registered: Monday, January 7 2002 08:00
Hello there everyone....what game are you playing now? in General
X Shaper Member # 496	written Monday, September 1 2003 06:49 Profile #57 Camus' fiction was pretty good--esp. 'The Plague' about the German occupation, though he cheats in 'The Outsider', still introducing emotions when it suits him--but you should check out his philosophical essays to get thinking. Probably because of Algeria, he manages to equivocate in 'The Rebel' in a way I felt ultimately weak and disagreeable, but definitely worth arguing with. 'The Myth of Sisyphus' has delightfully positive conclusions, given it opens so incredibly depressingly ('Why live? Why not kill yourself now?', etc - he comes up with a 'why not?', of course). EDIT: That'll teach me to read the thread more closely - Kakashi, there are no real saviours at the end of 'Lord of the Flies'. In the suppressed opening of the novel, a nuclear war is described devastating the Earth just as the boys devastating the island, so the Navy officers who arrive at the end are just seen as 'big boys' tainted by the same Original Sin as the school kids. [ Tuesday, September 02, 2003 05:50: Message edited by: X ] Posts: 2333 | Registered: Monday, January 7 2002 08:00
ASTRONOMY UPDATE: Mars in General
X Shaper Member # 496	written Saturday, August 30 2003 03:59 Profile #18 Traditionally, the Crucifixion was AD33, but astronomical discoveries now suggest Christ was rather unfortunately born 4 BC ('Before Christ'!) assuming He was born at all, so I guess that puts the Vogon apocalypse off until 2026. I'm worried. As to the Mayans, they only calculated their years as 365 and a quarter days, so they're probably way out by now anyway. I'm surwe the process of the equinoxes musty have worked wonders when it came to calculating harvest time over the course of centuries. Posts: 2333 | Registered: Monday, January 7 2002 08:00
GF2 Beta in General
X Shaper Member # 496	written Saturday, August 30 2003 03:52 Profile #15 You're assuming oligarchs act in everyone's interest rather than in their own, to preserve their own power. History shows the ltter is more typical. Additionally, you're assuming the oligarch acts rationally and knows what's best. The isolation of power / detachment from, reality caused by being surrounded by a circle of power-seeking sycophants suggests otherwise. Hitler's style of government--where flunkies endlessly cut across each other competing to turn his informal 'table talk' into fuhrer-pleasing spectacle--seems typical to me. I have my suspicions that modern 'political management' techniques increasingly tend democracy to an oligarchical mentality with all its pitfalls though. They're about conning the public with propaganda (which the wannabe oligarch may even believe themselves) for knee-jerk votes rathr than being receptive and accountable to the electorate. Posts: 2333 | Registered: Monday, January 7 2002 08:00
Hello there everyone....what game are you playing now? in General
X Shaper Member # 496	written Saturday, August 30 2003 03:35 Profile #48 I hadf to write about 'Lord of the Flies'--and all of Golding's later turgid works ('The Paper Men' - yuk!)--for my Lit degree. It always amazes me that such a clever writer should be such a stupid human being. Posts: 2333 | Registered: Monday, January 7 2002 08:00
Wierd Ebay Auctions in General
X Shaper Member # 496	written Friday, August 29 2003 04:59 Profile #26 I AM THE LIZARD QUEEN. Do I get it in a bottle? I guess you'd have had to be Britney or something to get $2,000 for the commodity in question. Some people have more money than sense, and rather Victorian socio-sexual attitudes. Posts: 2333 | Registered: Monday, January 7 2002 08:00
ASTRONOMY UPDATE: Mars in General
X Shaper Member # 496	written Friday, August 29 2003 04:55 Profile #15 Which ones? Like how the German river "Hister" was actually the German tyrant "Hitler", or the opposite of that? Hm. The trouble with millenial prophecies s that they tend to be self-fulfilling. If people think society will break down in nine years time, they disregard its conventions and so it does. Didn't happen in 2000 though, for all the Y2K hype. Posts: 2333 | Registered: Monday, January 7 2002 08:00
Boards down? in General
X Shaper Member # 496	written Friday, August 29 2003 04:51 Profile #14 'Dick' = 'pecker', somewhat archiac and mildly offensive slang for the male generative organ. Posts: 2333 | Registered: Monday, January 7 2002 08:00
To all European football fans in General
X Shaper Member # 496	written Friday, August 29 2003 04:48 Profile #19 'Arse' is at least a Middle English word for the posterior - Chaucer used it in 'Canterbury Tales' and I bet others can find earlir usages. 'Ass' seems a dumb name for this celebrated portion of the body - I mean, what's the connection between it and the equine? On football, I do hope Man U. don't do well, simply because too many people support them just because they like to be on the winning side, and would show no such loyalty if they were at the bottom of the League and not the top. Whilst Chelsea have got the technique to match 'em (unlimited funds to buy players...hm), their fans are notorious horrible (Headhunters, etc - apologies to Chelsea fans also embarassed by them), so I find it difficult to wish them well - even against Man U. [ Friday, August 29, 2003 04:48: Message edited by: X ] Posts: 2333 | Registered: Monday, January 7 2002 08:00
Element Test in General
X Shaper Member # 496	written Friday, August 29 2003 04:40 Profile #5 1., 6., 1., though if the money was someone's I didn't like I'd keep it if I thought I could get away with it and if not, I'd hand it in to the cops (or whoever) to inconvenience them getting it back. Posts: 2333 | Registered: Monday, January 7 2002 08:00
To all European football fans in General
X Shaper Member # 496	written Thursday, August 28 2003 08:13 Profile #10 Most of the 'irregularities' in English English stem from Dark Age invasions by Angles and Danes (e.g. the 'w' in 'sword') or later Norman invasion, and make perfect sense in those languages. American English was 'rationalised' (inverted commas included for the sake of neutrality) relatively recently, by the Hoover administration in the 1930s, and would have been thought 'wrong' (divergent from English English) even by Americans before then. Returning to the general subject, the footie season has started in UK too. Being some sort of pervert, I don't follow the game, but understand nothing on Earth (e.g. SW conventions) is going to stop footie fans talking with boundless enthusiasm about the centre of their universe once they get started. Posts: 2333 | Registered: Monday, January 7 2002 08:00
ASTRONOMY UPDATE: Mars in General
X Shaper Member # 496	written Thursday, August 28 2003 08:04 Profile #8 Mars will be around for ages, if fractionally less close each night. As I'm on nights, I keep with this stuff. More interesting staring at the sky in the yard than the terminal on my desk. Remember the lunar eclipse a few months back. The other guys were all standing around the yard looking up and complaining they couldn't see the moon. "It's an effing eclipse", I told them, "Of course you can't it!" Posts: 2333 | Registered: Monday, January 7 2002 08:00

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